Getting your website address in front of other people already on the web is a great way to get visitors to your site.  In this article, I’m going to talk about various ways to get your links on other people’s pages. This article focuses on how to get business from local links, not how to build your Search Engine Optimization strategy.

First of all, you want to be selective in your strategy.  If you are a dog groomer in Riverside, getting your website address on the American Kennel Club’s site is of limited value because their audience is national and your customers are local.  By all means, if the AKC wants to give you a link, take it, but don’t invest your time and money in pursuing those kinds of links.

Instead, place your links where people who might become customers can see them.  For instance, the Kennel Club of Riverside might be an excellent resource.

You can get links in one of three ways:

1. You can ask for them.  Sometimes people will be nice and link to you.  Other times, they will ask for a “reciprocal link” or link back to their site.

2. You can buy text links.  For $10 to $100 a year, you can often get a premium space on a key website.

3. You can write an article for the site and ask for a “resource box” describing your name and services.  In this way, they get free content for their site and you get a great pre-sold link back to yours.

One other thing that you should know about linking strategies is that sometimes you want to get a lot of links out there not to drive traffic to your site but to make your site look like an authority in the Search Engine’s eyes.  (See the article on Search Engine Optimization for more information on this).  In this case, you will want to write articles on the general subject of your business and distribute them widely through article directories.  While you can only expect minimal traffic from these links, they are still valuable in helping your site rank well for your keyword terms.

Inland Web Services can help you develop and implement linking strategies in a cost effective manner.  Give us a call at 909-809-8566 today.